by Tyler, Anne
She had a nice smile, Loretto had. He had never noticed her at all until recently, thought she was a streelish little one in a shabby boxeen of a shop.
It was extraordinary how she had livened up when O’Neill’s foreign woman came to live there. And would anyone be able to explain what had happened to send her packing so suddenly?
Fergus Slattery heard the telephone ring at seven-fifteen. That had to be some crisis.
He dragged himself unwillingly from a dream where he was advising the Rolling Stones about their grammar, and telling them that the song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” actually and literally meant that they could get satisfaction, which was fine if this is what they wanted to say.
The Rolling Stones had been delighted with Fergus and had asked him to get on the payroll. He wouldn’t have to leave Mountfern but could advise by phone or letter on anything that needed revision. They promised to come and see him when next they were passing that way, and Fergus had told them they’d get a great bed and breakfast in Ryan’s. Dara had been so grateful to him and had apologized for ever thinking he should be put down like an old horse.
Loath to leave such entertainment, he went in his bare feet to the phone.
“It’s Rosemary.”
“Who?”
“I know we haven’t seen each other a great deal over the past while, Fergus, but I am your only sister.”
“My God, Rosemary, is anything wrong? It’s the middle of the night. Did something happen?”
“Of course something happened. I’m hardly ringing you for a chat out of the blue.”
“What is it? The boys … was there an accident …?”
“The boys are fine wherever they are. They don’t bother to let me know.”
He waited.
“It’s James. He had me out of the house, changed the locks. He can’t do this to me. He can’t throw me out of my own home.” She was near to tears.
“When did this happen?”
“The locks were changed last night, I stayed in a guest house. I was waiting until I could ring you to know what to do.”
A wave of pity came over him for this tall shruggy woman, with no warmth and no charm. He remembered her visit at the time of their father’s funeral, her lack of any kindness, her cruel taunting remarks.
And now, at this ungodly hour of the morning, she had finally been locked out of the family home in Manchester.
“Wait until nine-thirty, Rosemary,” he said.
“What will you do then?”
“I will do nothing, but you’ll go to a solicitor—a solicitor in Manchester, mind, not in Mountfern. And you’ll tell him what happened, and the circumstances leading up to it, and he will tell you what to do.”
“I don’t know any solicitors in Manchester, for heaven’s sake. If I did have any legal contacts, do you think I’d be ringing you?”
“No, I know that. I know that very clearly.”
“So what’s the point in saying find a solicitor, find a solicitor? I could have looked one up in a phone book myself.”
“I think that’s probably the best thing to do.” He kept his tone even.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Rosemary. It sounds distant and may even sound harsh, but I can’t give you any advice whatsoever. You must see that.”
There was a silence.
“I’m sorry about it all. Do you think it can be sorted out, the difficulties with James?”
“Difficulties.” She gave a snort of laughter and said the word again, mimicking his accent. “Difficulties! No, I don’t think they can be sorted out, as you say.” Her tone was scornful.
“Well, then, the best I can wish you is that you are able to work out adequate provisions and a settlement, and that it is done with as little hurt and animosity as possible.”
“Jesus, but you’re a pompous bore, Fergus.”
He had been going to say that if she wanted a holiday she could come to the house where she had grown up in Mountfern. He would not say this now.
He thought of the night that he had been going to give her the old Victorian sewing table belonging to his mother, and had changed his mind over some insult that she had slung at him. Perhaps her whole life was a series of such non-happenings.
“I hope I’m not as bad as you make me out, but I’m sure, like all of us, I must have my faults.” He put on a mad simper as he said this. He tried to look at himself in the hall mirror, but the light was bad and he could only see his tousled hair and his crumpled pajamas.
He did a little dance while holding the phone and leering at his reflection. It pleased him to know that Rosemary could have no idea of his manner.
There was no more to say now, so Rosemary had rung off. Fergus was well into his capering dance now so he continued it, round and round the hall, pretending to hold up a ball gown and curtsying at himself every time he came to the mirror.
As he passed the hall door in a spectacular twirl, he saw two eyes looking at him through the letter box.
Fergus stopped in his tracks. “Who’s that?” he asked fearfully.
“I’m sorry, Fergus.” A thin voice came apologetically through the slit in the door.
He threw open the hall door, and there was Loretto Quinn, a letter in her hand.
“I was just about to put this through the door, but I heard these swishing sounds so I looked in, in case something was wrong.”
Loretto had never looked so alarmed in all the years he had known her.
“But you were pleased to see that everything was as normal.” Fergus beamed at Loretto as he took the letter. “I always have a little dance like this to start the day. They advised us years ago in the Four Courts, they said there was nothing like it for settling the mind into a good legal way of thinking.”
Loretto’s mouth was still open as Fergus bowed to her theatrically and closed the door.
Jim Costello woke with a toothache.
He gave himself five minutes to decide whether he could bear it for the day or whether it would incapacitate him for the day. He decided it would render him speechless.
He rang Dr. White and asked the name of the dentist in the town. Then he rang the dentist.
The dentist was sorry, but he had limited surgery hours today; he was actually going to the official celebrations at the opening of a big new hotel.
“I’m the manager of that bloody hotel, and there won’t be an opening unless you do something with my tooth,” Jim said, maddened with pain and the man’s slow obstinate voice at the other end of the phone.
“Well well well.”
“Can you do it, or can you not?” As he spoke, Jim Costello realized how like Patrick O’Neill he was becoming in his speech. It sat better on a middle-aged American tycoon than on a young Irish hotelier.
He changed his approach.
“As you can see, I am utterly relying on you. Just a temporary dressing, anything. You’ve been highly recommended in these parts.”
“I don’t really …”
Jim played his final card. “And if you knew the whole story about the problems we’ve been having and all the celebrities who are expected today … Well, you’ll meet them yourself. If it ever gets going at all.”
That did it. The man said Jim was to get into a car and drive like the clappers, he’d open his office early for him. A chance to hear the inside story about Fernscourt was too much to pass by.
Mary Donnelly woke and spoke to Leopold, who had been waiting patiently for her to stir.
Leopold was a more intelligent dog than many people gave him credit for. He knew the way to stay in Mary’s good books was by not waking her or snuffling around for anything interesting and certainly not by offering any of his paws in the form of a handshake. Mary was of the opinion that there was far too much insincerity and over-greeting going on in the world. She liked silent ruminative thoughtful encounters. Leopold had adapted to her ways.
He was surprised that she seemed to be making a speech to him;
it was not her usual way of greeting the day. He held his head on one side and tried to understand what she was telling him.
It had nothing to do with a walk. But there was no abuse in it, either. He couldn’t fathom it at all.
“Leopold, this is a black day for this house. But apparently none of us are allowed to mention it. The new way of going on is to pretend a problem doesn’t exist. That way we can all go on drinking and slapping each other on the back.
“Listen to me well, Leopold. This is the beginning of the end. You and I could be walking the roads of Ireland with packs on our backs. There’s going to be nothing in the profits of this establishment to put a dinner on the table for either of us once this hotel gets going. But to be fair, Leopold, they never put your dinner on the table. More the floor.”
The dog looked at her trustingly.
“Don’t mind me, Leopold,” she said, scratching his ear. “I am totally mad. Not a little mad. Totally and completely mad.”
Brian Doyle woke with a thick head. They had been celebrating until a late hour. O’Neill had said that as far as could be seen to the naked eye, the structure seemed sound, and more or less approximated to the plans that had been given to Brian Doyle. He had bought Brian several drinks on the strength of this. Then, back in the town, Brian had decided to finalize the arrangements for taking Peggy, his girlfriend of many years, to the opening. He would call for her at noon, his brother Paudie would drive them so that they need not worry if there were a few drinks taken during the day.
He had been neglectful of Peggy, particularly during these last weeks. He had wanted to explain to her that this was all over. He had not been prepared to meet her mother, a battle axe if ever there was one. The mother had said that Peggy would be going to no opening or closing of any hotel whether built by Brian Doyle or built by the Emperor of China.
Peggy had, according to her mother, belatedly come to her senses over Brian Doyle, she realized that having her name up with him for so many years had brought her nothing but heartbreak and humiliation and, what was more distressing still, had cut her off from any other avenue and future. So that was all in the past now, thanks to the good Lord who had opened her eyes, and she had instructed her mother to pass the burden of the message on to Brian if he ever made an appearance in the next year or so.
This was the heavy artillery.
Brian sat in Peggy’s mother’s kitchen letting the words wash over him and trying to work out where Peggy might be.
“Don’t start it all up again,” said the woman in front of him, who had not ceased to speak since he entered the house. “You’re a bachelor, Brian, stay one. For God’s sake, will you go back out to that hotel and pat it and stroke it and be with it morning noon and night? That’s what you want.”
“I can’t go to bed with the hotel,” Brian said eventually.
“And as sure as your name is Brian Doyle, you can’t go to bed with my daughter either. Sweet talk or no sweet talk. Ring or no ring.”
It hadn’t crossed Brian’s mind that a ring should form part of the proceedings. There was plenty of time for that.
He had left the house disconsolately and on the street run into Seamus Sheehan, the sergeant from Mountfern.
Since Seamus was off duty they went to a pub and Brian explained that he was not a knave or a philanderer at heart, it was just that he was too young to settle down.
Sergeant Sheehan said that basically all men were too young to settle down, his long life in the Guards had taught him that. He cross-questioned Brian about the tunnel behind the bedroom wing, and whether there was any entrance in it under the brambles and briars.
Brian said that he couldn’t bear to think of any more entrances or exits to that hotel than there were already. There had been an unmerciful carry-on about where the drive was going to be at the start; most people thought that it was never going to get off the ground at all.
But Sergeant Sheehan went on and on. Any entrances to old shafts or tunnels or anything they had come across?
Brian Doyle had said that when it was a question of a fairy fort, some of the men he had working for him were as superstitious as old shawlies who would go and tie things to a May tree. They had just avoided going anywhere near it and in the end the best thing had been to build a trellis and drape these creepers over it. Made a kind of wall of sorts.
No, he had no idea if there was anything in it. He didn’t give much thought to the fairy world himself, there was too much happening in the so-called real world. If they were there, which seemed highly unlikely, then leave them to get on with it; that was Brian’s philosophy. Oh, the sergeant meant non-fairies? No, he could not imagine that anyone with a marble left in their head would want to be burrowing around under all those blackberries and old thorns. But then Brian was always the last to be told anything. The whole Pioneer Total Abstinence Association could be having their annual general meeting in those bushes before anyone would think of telling the poor builder.
But wasn’t it a bloody miracle that the place was finished and none of them were in jail or up in the asylum on the hill?
Too late Brian Doyle remembered the youngest Sheehan boy was in that very asylum. He looked glumly into his pint. There were some things you could never backtrack your way out of, and it was wiser not to try.
Sergeant Seamus Sheehan woke and made his wife a cup of tea.
“This is your big day,” she said sleepily. “Is the weather good for it?”
He opened the curtains a little and peered out.
“It’s bright,” he said. “It’ll be sunny with scattered showers, they said.”
“Ah, well, that’s grand, and they’ll have a tent set up so you won’t notice the showers.”
She was pleased that her husband would be on show and a man of importance today. There were very senior men from Phoenix Park, the Garda headquarters, coming to the reception, and there were local guards from around coming in to help with the traffic and because there would be VIPs coming to the reception. Seamus would have more responsibility than he ever had before.
Seamus Sheehan was glad he hadn’t told his wife about the plan to close in on the tunnel that morning. He had been in the town last night setting it all up with the force there.
He had been praised for the excellent surveillance he had kept, and the superintendent said that he was a model of what an efficient rural sergeant could do by knowing the people of his place and being able to spot anything untoward.
McCann, Byrne and Red Molloy were no mean prize to get in one net.
The plan was to take them early and have it wrapped up before the guests started arriving.
Whatever they were up to, that crowd, it must have something to do with the opening. A possible kidnapping.
Guaranteed, of course, to get the worst publicity for Ireland if it took place when a load of American journalists were actually on the spot feeding their faces with salmon and brown bread. They would get them into different cars and take them by different routes to the Garda station in the big town.
Charlie Byrne was the thicko, he’d certainly tell them what was going on.
Sergeant Sheehan was glad that it would all be over well before his wife had put on the new suit that was hanging up outside the wardrobe so that it wouldn’t get crushed, together with the frilly white blouse and a handbag so new that it was still in the paper bag from the shop and had tissue paper inside it to make it keep its shape.
Kate felt that the day had started poorly. All that shouting and the upset in the bathroom.
But these were as nothing compared to the fact that Carrie was now almost certainly pregnant. That was the first thing to be coped with.
She called the girl into her room and asked her to close the door.
“Have a plain marietta biscuit, Carrie, take one there from the tin on the windowsill.”
Carrie’s eyes were huge. “I was just going to have a drink of bitter lemon or something, ma’am …”
“No, th
e biscuit is best. I remember myself.”
Carrie’s eyes were full of tears. “It must be definite, ma’am,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Why are you saying you’re sorry to me?”
“Well, you’ve been very nice to me. I don’t want to go bringing disgrace on you. That’s the last thing I’d want.”
“You won’t do that. It’s all a matter of what way we look at it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Fine used to say to me that life was all about how you looked at things. If you saw the sunny side, then things were sunny … You know, the Americans have some book about it.”
Carrie looked at her, bewildered.
“So what I mean is this, there’s going to be no tears, no apologies, no shame. No saying to Jimbo that you’re sorry. It’s not your fault, any more than it is his.”
“But he could say I’d been with anyone. Jimbo’s going to be a known singer. There’s going to be people here today who will have heard of him.” Carrie was full of awe.
“Yes, but he’s your Jimbo. He’s not going to walk out on you?”
“If I gave in to him, let him have his way, what’s to stop him thinking I let other fellows have their way?”
Kate’s face was very impatient.
“Loretto Quinn and Jack Coyne are going to announce their engagement today. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brian Doyle might even stir himself to propose to that long-suffering Peggy. What more natural than you and Jimbo too?”
“But ma’am, he mightn’t want to …”
Kate wasn’t listening. “Yes, a big occasion like this, a very good place, we could even get a bit in the newspapers about it: Singer to wed, it’s a good time of year to think of an Easter wedding.”
“Easter?”
“Yes, well that’s for Loretto and Jack. But you and Jimbo might find that to fit in with his career you might suddenly get married straight away, before Christmas.”
